<p>Jamiecakes,
If you had visited Swarthmore on a Sunday afternoon, you also wouldn’t have found anyone walking around the campus. They would all be in the library! I have one Swat grad and one currently there, and when we drove the current student back to school after he had been home for a family wedding, I remarked to them (Swat grad was with us) that the campus was empty, and they both immediately exclaimed, “Everyone’s in the library!” :)</p>
<p>My oldest son, upon visiting Williams’ gorgeous campus, remarked that he had no interest in the school because there was a street running through it! :rolleyes: For those of you not familiar with the Williams campus, it is a bucolic setting and does have Route 2 dividing it. The occasional drivers on Route 2 stop to let the students cross the street!</p>
<p>Actually, they were probably asleep. We were there pretty early, maybe 10:00. It made me laugh that he was so dismayed by the empty campus because he would have been asleep at 10:00 on a typical Sunday, so what did he expect?</p>
<p>Next time we will call ahead to make sure the admissions folks will roust everyone out of bed to make a better impression on my skeptical teen. ;)</p>
<p>We dragged our younger twins on our oldest’s tour of Bowdoin. The school got the thumbs down from both. Girl twin, a 14 year old chicken nugget-eating vegetarian (the worst sort of vegetarian) refused to get past the stuffed polar bear in the athletics center. “You mean, like, they KILLED their mascot?? Not cool.” Boy twin, NYC boy thru and thru…got out of the car and complained that there was “too much air” in Maine.</p>
<p>Momof3sons, the road through the middle of campus made some colleges a non-starter for my DD2 as well. She found her place though and is happy where she is.</p>
<p>LOL! I think that’s a vegetarian who is a vegetarian, except for when it comes to chicken nuggets - which that individual happens to just really love and eat anyway, even though they’re not vegetables! But I’m just guessing!</p>
<p>@ cromette…that’s exactly right. Apparently at 14 you can opt out of your vegetarian status when food comes in nugget form. Or in taco form…or in pizza topping form. @ Jamiecakes…good point. I wouldn’t bet on it.</p>
<p>This past weekend we took a tour of a small private college. Our tour guide was a freshman who was extremely homesick. Along the tour, she stopped us at the guidance office where her favorite counselor resides. She is responsible for helping the freshmen transition from home life to college life. She told us that sometimes she just shows up at her office and says I need a hug. She also told us she was very homesick a few weeks back when she became ill and she begged her mom to come visit. Her mom said no and to suck it up. Also we toured on a Saturday morning at 10 am when all the students were sleeping! So the campus was literally dead! </p>
<p>So I asked my daughter what she thought of the campus. She said, “I am not applying here because I would feel very lonely here.”</p>
<p>After reading all these posts, it sounds like taking a campus tour on a weekend morning is not a good idea. Try going during a weekday. If your child is interested in college nightlife, hang out on a weekend night.</p>
<p>There was a woman in my office who was a very strong willed vegetarian. One day she showed up in a leather jacket. The hard-core hunter in the office went up to her and said: “Well, if you are going to skin it, you might as well eat it.”</p>
<p>One of the best tours we have been on was given by a first-year student who had only been on campus for three months. She was poised, well-informed, and excited about her college. She was also honest, down-to-earth, and obviously not just following a script.</p>
<p>To be fair, this was many years ago (1982). There was an early Saturday morning campus tour of an urban Catholic college campus by a group of h.s. seniors from a suburban Catholic girls school. Maybe 30 girls and 40 parents trailing a very enthusiastic tour guide. The campus was pretty quite when a scruffy male student emmerged onto his dorm balcony wearing nothing but tighty-whiteys raised two fists in the air and and boomed, “Send us your virgins!” Awkward moment.</p>
<p>Marsian–I agree–I think MORE freshmen should be giving tours or going along on tours. There are so many “freshman” type questions that juniors and seniors have forgotten or don’t really remember. For us that was what are weekends like on campus, etc.</p>
<p>On a tour my D went on, every time anyone asked a question, the tour guide would say that he didn’t know because “a lot had changed since he was a freshman!” It got to the point where the parents and perspective students were filling each other in on everything! When we got to a dorm, we sought out some girls in the hall to answer our questions.The only thing he was passionate about was the swimming test that the school required and how he felt it was very important not to wait until one was a senior to take it.</p>
But I’m just guessing!</p>
@ Jamiecakes…good point. I wouldn’t bet on it.</p>